Seòmar agus comataidhean

It is.

Thank you for your indulgence in allowing Colin Smyth and me to address the committee this morning.

There is, of course, a legal dimension to this issue, so there is an element of detail that we cannot go into around the cases, the survivors and the abuse that they suffered. There is much that we cannot say but want to say and I hope that, in the fullness of time and upon the conclusion of the legal proceedings, there will be an opportunity for those stories to be told in full.

I, too, pay tribute to the Fornethy survivors and, in particular, to Marion Reid. As you say, convener, many of them are joining us in the public gallery this morning. Many of those whom we can see before us today joined Colin Smyth and me on a trip back to Fornethy house last summer. It was a very emotional but cathartic visit.

I first met the women more than two years ago. The accounts that they imparted to me of the brutality and sexual abuse that they suffered as young children are absolutely horrendous and harrowing, and they still keep me awake at night. The courage that the women have demonstrated in telling us about what happened to them and in fighting for justice, sometimes against the prevailing wind, has been truly inspiring. They have said that it has never been about money, but what they want more than anything is an acknowledgement of the abuse that they suffered, and to receive a full and meaningful public apology.

In her remarks to the committee last month, the Deputy First Minister said that the women should be excluded from the redress scheme, arguing that they were sent to Fornethy for short-term care. However, that runs contrary to the accounts of countless women. We know that thousands of girls from disadvantaged backgrounds were sent by Glasgow council to Fornethy as “educational pupils”—I quote the phrase that was used—at a residential school, not as children attending a respite care centre or holiday home. It has been suggested that these girls’ parents sent them to Fornethy voluntarily, but they were largely from vulnerable and impoverished families who put their children into the care of the school system and facilitated their attendance at Fornethy.

Even the former Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, said:

“I find it difficult to reconcile”

placing a young person in Fornethy house with

“some form of voluntary endeavour”.—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 12 January 2023; c 14.]

He also rejected the idea that the scheme is not for the Fornethy survivors. It would be a grave injustice to bar these women from the redress scheme. I hope that the committee recognises the stories of these courageous women and, at the very least, allows them to tell their story to the world, recognises their victimhood and recognises that the redress scheme should apply to them.

It has been one of the privileges of my parliamentary career to bring light to their story. I stand with them today. I have stood with them for the past two years, and I will continue, along with Colin Smyth and other parliamentarians named in your opening remarks, convener, to stand with them for as long as it takes for them to find justice.

Thank you, convener, for allowing me to join the committees’ deliberations today.

Minister, you know that I am supportive of the Government’s approach to harmful substance use and deaths caused by the same. However, my question is about a topic that you and I have not discussed before. You touched briefly on the topic in your opening remarks, and in an answer to Russell Findlay—synthetic opioids.

I have a graph in front of me from the United States. It says that in 2012, just over 2,500 people died from synthetic opioids, predominantly from fentanyl, but that last year that number had jumped 73,500. There is an epidemic of synthetic opioid misuse in the states that has not yet been realised on our shores, but that may be changing.

The metrics speak for themselves. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in April 2022, it instituted a national ban on the growth and sale of the opium poppy. As a result, opium exports from Afghanistan have dropped right off, and stakeholders are concerned that there may be only 18 months’ worth of heroin left in the illicit global supply chain. The vacuum that that will create might well be filled by synthetic opioids—predominantly fentanyl, but also Captagon, which is coming out of countries such as Syria.

First and foremost, what work is your Government doing to prepare for surveillance of what people are taking so that we can get an early warning if synthetic opioids hit our shores? The death rates from fentanyl are far worse than those from heroin.

Are we confident that the processes and interventions, such as naloxone, that we have at our disposal for crisis response and overdose mitigation are applicable to the synthetic opioids that are coming in? Are we learning from our North American colleagues about what interventions have been efficacious in those countries and are we ready to adopt those quickly? Things could happen very quickly. Are you confident that we are in a good place?

That is fantastic. I have one final question, if I may, convener.

Before I do so, I am required to draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests. First, I was a host through the homes for Ukraine scheme, and a Ukrainian refugee lived with our family for nine months. Secondly, I am under sanction by the Russian Federation for my work with the Ukrainian diaspora here.

On 22 February last year, our world turned on its axis when Russia brought war to continental Europe for the first time in a century. The men and women of Ukraine are fighting in the trenches of their homeland not just for their freedom and sovereignty but for the freedom and sovereignty of all of the free democracies of this world. We owe them a debt of gratitude that we will never repay and, in the formation of the cross-party group, it is important that we recognise that struggle not only for the people who are still fighting in Ukraine, but for the Ukrainian diaspora who are choosing to make Scotland their home. Much time in the chamber has been taken up with a recognition of their needs and interests and the fact that we still have some way to go in settling them in this country. For both of those reasons, the cross-party group deserves the support of this committee and its recognition in this Parliament. I hope that the cross-party group will be long standing and will outdate the war, when the Ukrainians win their freedom and victory over the Russian Federation.

I am aware of a number of relationships that have sprung up organically between parliamentarians in this place and in the Rada, in Ukraine. The group is a great opportunity to formalise that and, as Colin Beattie said, establish a standing friendship committee that will further those ties.

Thank you very much for bringing me back in, convener. The minister knows about my party’s long-held support for safe consumption rooms. That speaks to the approach that we discussed in our earlier exchange, which is about understanding that people will always consume; that zero tolerance does not work; and that we need to help people to consume as safely as possible if that is their choice.

The matter now rests with the Lord Advocate. We know from yesterday’s events that she has been very busy. Is the Lord Advocate working to a timeline? Do you have an expectation of when she will come back to you on the matter? With every week that goes by, lives are potentially not being saved.

May I have a final question, convener?

Thank you very much, convener. I appreciate the offer to allow me to come and sit with the committees today.

I have a couple of questions on ADPs and MAT standards, but I would like to start immediately with deaths among young people. It is a topical issue, as there was a death in my constituency a couple of weeks ago, at a festival, as a result of someone taking drugs. I have had meetings with the festival organisers, whom I had met beforehand, and they are exemplars in providing a safe space, with a state-of-the-art medical facility on site, security and healthcare staff.

Very sadly, the young lady died having ingested substances before she attended the festival, so there was nothing that a zero-tolerance approach could have done to protect her. However, there is a perverse reality in the way that we are policing our festivals in Scotland at the moment, as opposed to the approach in England. We have a zero-tolerance approach to drug use at festivals, and I understand that, on paper, that sounds compelling. In England, there is pill testing, with a recognition that some people will just get high at festivals; we want them to be able to do so in safety.

Have you considered having discussions with the Lord Advocate around the policing of such events, so that we can allow young people, or people of any age, to attend festivals as safely as possible, with a recognition that we will just not stop people choosing to take substances on occasion and that we need to allow them to do so in safety, as is done in England and Wales?